A colleague and I have developed a set of lunchtime sessions that aim to help journalists save time. These have been given the go-ahead from our organisational develeopment director, which is really exciting.
There is nothing earth-shattering here and any jourrnalists worth their salt should be doing this stuff. BUT, not enough are using RSS at RBI and many have problems keeping on top of emails.
We are hoping that short, practical sessions will appeal to busy journalists ie they will attend. And as there are clear learning points from each session our hope is that they will be useful.
I am also looking to set up a blog to support these intiatives so that the content from the sessions is put to use and that journalists can share tips on how to make more effective use of technology.
Here are the session outlines.
RSS readers and news alerts
This will be one hour max and will be delivered in a software training room. Delegates will be shown how to set up an account and populate it with news feeds. They will also be shown how to set up news alerts. As a part of an introduction to the session we will ask a member of an editorial team to explain how an RSS reader has helped him/her with the way they work.
Email tips
This will be one hour max and will be delivered in a software training room. As above, this will be a demonstration of how to more effectively use and manage emails, bringing in someone from an editorial team to set the scene and outline how they manage email.
Online resources to save you time
Prior to this session 5 editorial people will road test some of the time saving tools out there (Remember the milk etc) and they will then feedback their results to delegates and demonstrate what they have been roadtesting. This session will be two hours max.
Running effective meetings
As above, use three or four people from around the business to share their tips on how to make meetings work.